Custom Splash Screen for Raspberry Pi (Raspbian)

I found this solution for creating a custom splash screen for the Pi.

Custom Splash Screen for Raspberry Pi (Raspbian) – EDV-Huber.com.

I’m cutting-and-pasting here just in case it disappears on it’s home site.


This is a quick and dirty solution for an unanimated custom splash screen during boot.

First of all, you need to install fbi:

apt-get install fbi

Copy your custom splash image to /etc/ and name it “splash.png”.

Next, create an init.d script called “asplashscreen” in “/etc/init.d/”.

I chose “asplashscreen” with an “a” at the beginning to be sure it starts first.

#! /bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          asplashscreen
# Required-Start:
# Required-Stop:
# Should-Start:      
# Default-Start:     S
# Default-Stop:
# Short-Description: Show custom splashscreen
# Description:       Show custom splashscreen
### END INIT INFO

do_start () {

    /usr/bin/fbi -T 1 -noverbose -a /etc/splash.png    
    exit 0
}

case "$1" in
  start|"")
    do_start
    ;;
  restart|reload|force-reload)
    echo "Error: argument '$1' not supported" >&2
    exit 3
    ;;
  stop)
    # No-op
    ;;
  status)
    exit 0
    ;;
  *)
    echo "Usage: asplashscreen [start|stop]" >&2
    exit 3
    ;;
esac

Then make that script executable and install it for init mode rcS:

chmod a+x /etc/init.d/asplashscreen
insserv /etc/init.d/asplashscreen

Reboot and watch your custom splash screen:

reboot

Recover Unallocated Space on SD card

I used RiscOS for a couple of days and then decided it wasn’t nearly as useful as Linux. So, I decided to write over the SD card containing RiscOS.

I tried using WinImage but for some reason the card refused to write. I had a lovely cyclic redundancy check error and the SD card was reporting the wrong amount of space free.

I tried using the Disk Management tool in Windows but it wouldn’t let me expand the primary partition to the full space.

I found this tutorial about using DiskPart to reset the card:

Recover Missing Unallocated Space On USB Drive Using Windows DiskPart.

In short:

  1. Press Windows-R and type DiskPart in the ‘Open’ box.
  2. This will bring up a DOS box with DiskPart running in it.
  3. Type ‘list disk’ and look for the disk that resembles your SD card. (For this tutorial, we’ll assume it’s Disk 1)
  4. Type ‘select disk 1’
  5. BE REALLY SURE YOU WANT TO WIPE THE CARD.
  6. Type ‘clean’. This resets the disk.
  7. Type ‘create partition primary’
  8. Type ‘exit’ to quit.

You can now go into Windows Explorer and Format the SD card before writing your image to it.